Senate panel says New Orleans hospital should be named after former lawmaker

BATON ROUGE -- The new University Medical Center in New Orleans, the under-construction successor to Charity Hospital on Tulane Avenue, may be years away from opening but a legislative committee has already named it.

UMC Management Corp.A rendering of plans for the new University Medical Center.

The Senate Committee on Senate and Governmental Affairs unanimously approved Senate Bill 304 by Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans, to name the facility after the Rev,. Avery C. Alexander, the late civil rights leader and 18-year House member from New Orleans.

Peterson's bill now goes to the Senate floor for debate.

Her bill says that the University Medical Center/Louisiana State University Hospital "currently under construction" will be known as "the Rev. Avery C. Alexander Academic Research Hospital."

Peterson said the name is not a departure from the hospital's previous nomenclature because the "pre-(Hurricane) Katrina hospital was named for him."

Sen. J.P. Morrell, D-New Orleans, a member of the panel, said naming the new hospital the same as the old one may help bring opponents and proponents of the new facility together and serve as a step toward overcoming the acrimonious debate over the construction of a new facility.

Ed Anderson can be reached at eanderson@timespicayune.com or 225.342.5810.